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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap.7-2,^) Copyright No.. 


UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 









































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“ WHAT A HALF-HOUR IT WAS FOR PANSY ! ” 


See Page 18 



Pansy Billings and Popsy 


Two Stories of Girl Life 


BY 

“H h :\ 

(HELEN HUNT JACKSON) 

AUTHOR OF “ RAMONA,” “ NELLY’S SILVER MINE,” 
“BITS OF TALK FOR YOUNG FOLKS,” 

ETC., ETC. 


ILLUSTRATED 


BOSTON 
LOTHROP PUBLISHING C 



2nc! GCU'V, 

1898 . 


TWO COPIES RECEIVED. 

*)J=t ITT* 




66 /8 


Copyright , i8q8, 


by 

Lothrop Publishing Company. 


Colonial $3ress: 

Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. 
Boston, U. S. A. 


CONTENTS. 


PANSY BILLINGS. 

C'lAPTER 

I. Archie McCloud’s Wooden Box . 
II. Pansy Goes into Business 

POPSY. 

I. Popsy’s Table-cloths 
II. Popsy’s Grand Journey . 


PAGE 

7 

. 24 


V 45 
• 79 







































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PANSY BILLINGS AND POPSY 












































PANSY BILLINGS. 


CHAPTER I. 

archie McCloud’s wooden box. 

Pansy was not her real name. She was bap- 
tized Mary Jane, after her mother’s oldest sister, 
but, from the time she was eight years old, she 
was never called anything but “ Pansy ; ” and 
how that came about, and what it all meant, 
both to Pansy herself and her family, it is the 
purpose of this story to tell. 

Pansy’s mother was a widow with three little 
children, — Pansy, the oldest, Albert, the second, 
and Alice, the youngest. 

When Pansy’s father died, Alice was a little 
baby, in the cradle, and Albert could but just 
run alone. Pansy was seven, and felt herself 


7 


8 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


as old and as important as a grown woman, 
because she took so much care of her little 
brother and sister. It was droll about the 
names of these two children. Before Alice 
was born, Albert had always been called Ally. 
When Mrs. Billings named the new baby 
Alice, she did not think about the natural nick- 
name for Alice being the same that they had 
already used for Albert, and, the first thing they 
knew, they had two “ Aliys ” in the house. 
That would never do. As the children grew 
up, it would make no end of confusion, so they 
fell into the way of calling Albert “ Ally-boy,” 
to distinguish him from the “ Ally ” that was a 
girl, and before long that came to be supposed 
to be his real name. All over the town he was 
known as “ Ally-boy,” which was by no means 
a bad name, any more than “ Pansy ” was. But, 
as Mrs. Billings used to say, anybody, to read 
her children’s names as they were written in the 
big family Bible, would wonder, and never think 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


9 


that the children answering to the names of 
Pansy, Ally-boy, and Ally were the same ones. 

Mr. Billings was a teamster. He owned a 
good wagon and pair of horses, and those, with 
his own strong hands, a good temper, and an 
upright character, were, as he often said, his only 
‘‘stock in trade.” But they proved a very good 
stock. He had always plenty of work, — every- 
body in the town who wanted work done would 
go to Billings first, and not give the job to any- 
body else, unless Billings was too busy. This 
was what Billings had won for himself, simply 
by being always pleasant, prompt, and faithful. 
He was an ignorant man, and a stupid one : 
knew enough to take care of horses, drive, and 
do an errand as he was bid, — no more ; but, little 
as it was, that was enoiigh to enable him to earn 
a living, and be respected by everybody. 

In which there is a lesson for all of us, if we 
will think about it a minute. It is the same 
lesson which Jesus Christ once put into a par- 


IO 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


able ; the parable of the lord who, going into a 
far country, gave to his different servants differ- 
ent sums of money, to one five silver talents, 
to another three, to another only one. And 
the man who had only one did not think it 
worth while to try to do anything with it, it was 
so small a sum. And that man, Jesus said, 
“was slothful and wicked,” and deserved to be 
punished. No such verdict as that would ever 
be pronounced against Billings. His talent was 
a very small one, but he used it faithfully, and 
to the utmost; and no doubt when he died he 
had his reward in the next world. Even in this 
he was remembered and regretted far longer 
than many a man who had been richer, cleverer, 
and more prominent than he. 

It was years before people left off saying, 
“ How we miss Billings ! ” “ There’s nobody 

now that can be trusted as we used to trust 
Billings ! ” 

When Mrs. Billings found herself alone with 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


I I 

her three little children, she did not know which 
way to turn. She had always earned a little 
money by washing, and by selling eggs ; enough 
for her own clothes, and the children’s, and now 
and then to buy a piece of furniture for the 
house; but to earn the entire support for the 
family was quite another thing. Her heart 
sank within her, as she looked into the three 
little faces, now clouded and sorrowful as they 
saw the sorrow and anxiety in hers. But she 
did not sit idle a minute, or waste any of her 
strength in useless fretting. 

She went to all her husband’s old customers, 
and asked them to ask their wives to give her 
their fine washing. She also resolved to en- 
large her poultry yard, and sell chickens, as well 
as eggs. These were the only things she knew 
of that she could do. 

It went very hard with them for a time, work 
was not plenty, and the chicken business very 
uncertain ; many a day both mother and chil- 


12 


PANSY BILLINGS . 


dren were hungry, and had not food enough in 
the house to eat. Still, they pulled through, 
month after month, and though their clothes 
were shabby and their food scanty, they had 
the comfort of a home together, and that was 
everything. 

Opposite their little house lived a florist, an 
old Scotchman named Archie McCloud. He 
was a queer, crotchety old man, but had most 
wonderful success with flowers. People came 
to him, from far and near, for roses, and carna- 
tions, and heliotrope, but most of all for pansies. 
Pansies were the old man’s delight. There was 
not a variety of pansy known which could not 
be found in his beds. 

“ It’s the flower o’ a’ flowers,” he used to say. 
“ It’s the face o’ a sma’ cheeld in it ; as the Lord 
himsel’ gie us for a pattern. I’d spare a’ the 
rest o’ them, an’ abide wi’ the parnsy.” 

When old Archie first noticed the little Bil- 
lings girl, with her baby sister in her arms, and 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


13 


her baby brother toddling behind, standing close 
to his fence and looking over at the flowers, he 
was not pleased. He was afraid of children. 
For they sometimes opened his gate, ran in, and 
stole flowers, when he was away. They reached 
over the fence and broke off the tops of his 
hedges. He hated to see them coming near 
his place, much as he loved them for their own 
sake. But there was something in this little 
girl’s face which drew him to her greatly. He 
observed that she was always pleasant and af- 
fectionate to the baby ; and once, when the 
baby reached over the fence and made a clutch 
at a lauristinus blossom, he saw her give a 
gentle tap to the little hand, and say, “ No, no, 
baby. You must not touch a leaf. They’re 
only to look at.” Then his heart warmed to 
the child, and he resolved to give her a bou- 
quet some day. The very next day, a lady 
stopped at the gate to buy some flowers. The 
group of little Billingses were standing near. 


14 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


As old Archie came, out with the flowers in a 
newspaper, and handed them to the lady in her 
carriage, a beautiful purple pansy slipped out 
and fell to the ground, almost under the horses’ 
feet. Quicker than a flash of lightning the 
Billings baby was laid on the ground, and her 
little nurse had sprung forward, close to the 
horses’ heels, snatched the flower, and handed 
it up, crying, “ Here is one that fell out ! ” 

“ Keep it, little girl,” said the lady, smiling 
kindly. 

“Oh! thank you!” said Pansy, — for so we 
must begin to call Mary Jane now, — “thank 
you ! ” and she looked at the flower with such 
an ecstasy of delight in her face that the lady 
thought to herself, “ This is no common child, 
to love flowers like that.” The lady herself 
loved flowers better than anything else in the 
world ; loved them so much that she could not 
help instantly liking any one, even a stranger, 
who loved them, too. 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


15 

“ Give her some more, Archie,” she said. 
“ The child evidently loves them.” 

“ Yes, mem, she do indeed. I’ve obsarved 
her. She’s an excellent cheeld, Mrs. Scott,” 
and he hastened back into the garden to cut 
the flowers. 

Pansy had not understood what was said, and 
remained lost in admiration and delight, looking 
down into the heart of her flower. 

“ Do you like the pansy ? ” said the lady. 

Pansy looked up, bewildered at first. 

“ Is that the name of it ? ” she asked. 

“ Dear, dear,” thought the lady, “ to think the 
poor little thing never saw a pansy before ! ” 

“Yes, that’s its name,” said the lady. “It is 
a lovely little flower.” 

“ It’s got a face in it,” said Pansy, rapturously, 
“just like it was laughing.” 

Old Archie came up just in time to hear this 
speech. His face glowed with pleasure. 

“ Eh, the bonnie bairn. Ye’re a parnsy 


6 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


yersil ’ ! Luik at the parceeption o’ the 
bairn, mem ! ” and from that hour old Archie 
was Pansy’s friend. So, also, was Mrs. Scott. 
Though months went by before she and Pansy 
were brought together again, she never forgot 
the child’s face of delight, nor her quick recogni- 
tion of the half-elfin laugh stamped on the pansy 
petals, and she said to herself, many a time, 
“ I’ll go and look up that child, and give her 
some flowers ; ” but Mrs. Scott was like most 
very rich ladies, so full of engagements and 
amusements that weeks counted up into months, 
without her realizing how fast they were speed- 
ing by. 

The next day, when old Archie saw Pansy at 
the fence, with her babies, he went over to speak 
to her. The first thing that caught his eye was 
the purple pansy pinned on the front of her 
apron. 

“ An’ ye’re wearin’ the parnsy ? ” he said. 

“ Yes, sir,” said Pansy. “ I didn’t like to leave 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


1 7 


her in the house. I thought she would like to 
come out and play with us,” and she looked 
down into the blossom’s face with a glance as 
loving as those she gave her little sister. The 
old man chuckled. 

“ An’ wha tauld ye ’twas a lassie ? ” he said. 
Pansy stared, perplexed. She was not used to 
the Scotch brogue. Archie repeated his ques- 
tion in plainer fashion. 

“ Oh, I don’t know,” said Pansy, “ I just called 
it so. It looks like Ally. Didn’t you ever see 
the face in it ? ” she added, innocently, unpin- 
ning the flower and holding it up to him. This 
time old Archie shook his sides, laughing. 

“ Ay, ay, bairn,” he replied. “ They’ve ’s 
mony faces ’s they’ve blossoms; I ken ’em a’. 
Come in, come in, an’ I’ll show ye a bonny sight 
o’ ’em,” and he opened the gate wide. 

Pansy trembled with pleasure. How she had 
longed and yearned to get inside that gate, and 
see the gay flower beds nearer at hand ! 


1 8 PANSY BILLINGS. 

“ Oh, thank you, sir,” she cried; “might I just 
take Ally-boy home and leave him ? I can carry 
the baby, but I’m afraid Ally-boy will step on 
the beds,” at which Ally-boy began to cry, and 
old Archie said, “ No, you needn’t take him 
home. I’ll lead him, and keep him off the 
beds.” 

Such a sight was never seen before in that 
garden, — three little children, one in arms, be- 
ing piloted about by the old Scotchman himself. 
And what a half-hour it was for Pansy! Her 
cheeks grew crimson with excitement, and she 
almost panted for breath, as she went from roses 
to carnations, and from carnations to heliotrope, 
and so on, till they came to the pansy beds, 
which were on the farther side of the garden. 
When she saw these, she did not speak a word, 
only looked, and looked, and now and then 
sighed. The queer old gardener liked her all 
the better for this. He hated chatter. When 
they got through, he said, “ Now, my bairn, 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


19 


there’s na cheeld kens what ye ken o’ this place. 
An’ ye’re welcome whenever ye like.” 

“ Do you mean, sir, that I’m to come in when 
I like ? ” asked Pansy. 

“ That’s it, praceesely,” replied old Archie. 
“Ye is to be trusted. I’ve watched ye mony a 
time, when ye little thocht it. An’ ye’ve an eye 
for the blossoms. Ye can come when ye like.” 

“ Oh, thank you very much,” said Pansy, 
and her eyes thanked him far more than the 
words. 

She did not go into the garden, however, for 
several days. Old Archie saw her standing, as 
usual, at the fence, and looking over, but she 
did not go near the gate. This pleased him, 
too. 

She’s na presoomin’, the little lassie. A fine 
modesty she’s got in her wee soul,” he said to 
himself ; “ it was a guid name I gave her, when 
I ca’ed her for the parnsy. It’s the richt name 
for hen” The next time he spoke to her he 


20 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


said, “ Guid-day to ye, little Parnsy,” and after 
that he never called her anything else. Soon 
Ally-boy caught it, and, before long, the baby; 
Mrs. Billings did not dislike the sound, and 
Pansy herself delighted in it. She began to 
have a strange feeling, which she was far too 
young to have put in words, or to understand, 
as if the pansies were her sisters. Whenever 
old Archie asked her of a morning what flower 
she would like, as he often did, she always said, 
“ A pansy, please,” and this pleased him more 
and more. Sometimes he would try to tempt 
her with some other flower. “ An’ winna ye like 
a rose the day ? or mebbe a pink ? ” 

“ No, sir, a pansy, please,” she would say, and 
then he would often add to the pansy the rose, 
or the carnation, saying, “ An’ if ye’ve na use for 
this one ye can give it t’ the mither.” 

So Pansy was seldom without one of her 
namesake blossoms pinned on her apron. She 
would wear it all day, put it in water at night, 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


21 


and, as if the blossom knew how the child loved 
it, it would come out fresh the next morning, 
ready to be worn again. 

But old Archie was preparing a still greater 
pleasure for his little friend. One day he ap- 
peared at Mrs. Billings’s door, with a long 
wooden box in his arms, almost heavier than he 
could carry, filled with pansies ; a dozen fine, 
healthy plants, in full bloom. These were to 
be Pansy’s own. He set the box in a sunny 
corner of the yard. Pansy was not at home, 
which grieved the old man. He wanted to see 
the child’s face at the first sight of them. But 
he did not lose much of its expression, for in 
less than a minute after her mother had shown 
her the box, and told her it was for her, she had 
raced over to the garden, burst open the gate, 
and, springing upon Archie, as he was stooping 
over a geranium bed, picking off dead leaves, 
she nearly threw him down with her impetuous 
hug and kiss. She had never kissed him of her 


22 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


own accord before, but now she hugged him and 
kissed, and kissed and hugged, till he was almost 
as out of breath as she. 

This box was the beginning of a new life for 
Pansy. She no longer spent so many hours 
standing at the old florist’s fence. She liked 
her own pansies better than all the gay-colored 
flowers to be seen in his beds. The more she 
looked at them, the more they seemed to her to 
be alive, as she and her brother and sister were 
alive. Often she would say to her mother, 
“ Can’t you see how they laugh ? This yellow 
one, she laughs the most, and the white one; 
they are better-natured than the black ones. ” 

She took the best care of them. Not a weed 
had a chance to more than show its head in the 
box before it was pulled up ; never a day passed 
that they were not watered, and, if the sun were 
too hot at noon, covered up with a thin paper ; 
old Archie had told her that this would make 
the blossoms last longer. He told her, also, 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


23 


about saving the seeds, to plant next year, so as 
to get new varieties. 

One morning, early in September, Pansy saw 
Mrs. Scott’s carriage stopping again at the gar- 
den gate. In a few moments old Archie came 
out, and, seeing Pansy, beckoned to her to come 


over. 


CHAPTER II. 


PANSY GOES INTO BUSINESS. 

“ Hev ye ony pansies in bloom in the box, 
me bairn ? ” he asked. 

“ Oh, yes, lots,” said Pansy, wondering why 
he asked. 

“ Weel, then, rin an’ cut all ye’ll like to 
spare,” said Archie. “ Mrs. Scott, she’s wantin’ 
two hunderd, an’ I canna mak’ it oot for her.” 

Pansy flew and cut every one in the box, 
not without a pang at losing them, but very 
glad to be able to, as she supposed, help old 
Archie. 

What was her surprise when, counting the 
pansies, carefully, he said, “ There’s fifty o’ ’em ; 
that ull be a dollar for ye, me bairn,” and he 
put a silver dollar into her hand. She looked 
at it and at him, so perplexedly that Mrs. 
Scott laughed out. 


24 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


25 


“ I did not know that you had an assistant 
florist, Mr. McCloud,” she said. “ This is the 
little girl that liked pansies so much, isn’t it? 
What is your name, dear ? ” 

Pansy hesitated. 

“ They all call me Pansy, now,” she said ; 
“my real name’s Mary Jane. But I don’t 
want the money for the pansies. They’re not 
my pansies, anyhow. Mr. McCloud only gave 
them to me to keep in a box. They’re all his,” 
and she stretched out her hand towards old 
Archie, to give him back the dollar. 

“ Na ! na ! ” he said. “ The siller’s yer ain ; 
haud fast to it. Siller dollars dinna grow on 
bushes. It’s your ain.” 

“ Oh, yes, Pansy, it is my money, not Mr. 
McCloud’s,” said Mrs. Scott, “and I like very 
much to buy pansies of a little girl named 
Pansy. Would you like to see what I am 
going to do with all these pansies, my dear ? ” 
she added, struck by a sudden fancy. 


26 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


“Yes, ma’am,” said Pansy, timidly. 

“ Well, jump in on the front seat with the 
driver,” replied Mrs. Scott, “and I’ll take you 
home with me and show you.” 

“ I’ll have to ask my mother, first,” said Pansy. 

“Jump in, Parnsy, jump in,” said old Archie. 
“ I’ll gang ower an’ tell it t’ the mither.” 

So Pansy, very happy, but a good deal 
frightened, was rolled away in the fine carriage, 
to Mrs. Scott’s beautiful house. It was the 
most beautiful house in the -town, and Mrs. 
Scott was one of the richest women ; as kind 
and good, too, as she was rich. As Archie 
watched her driving away with Pansy, he 
thought to himself : 

“ It wad na’ be strange if it waur the mak- 
kin’ o’ the lassie’s fortune, this ride she’s get- 
tin’ noo ! ” 

Old Archie did not know all that there was 
of energy and character in his Pansy’s little 
breast. She was not destined to be beholden 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


2 7 


to any one for the making of her life. She 
herself was to be the making of it. 

When they reached the house, Mrs. Scott 
led Pansy into the dining-room. Here a table 
was beautifully set for a dinner-party. The 
glass and silver and candlesticks shone so, 
that it made Pansy blink her eyes. 

In the centre of the table was a great bunch 
of feathery white clematis; on each side of this 
were dishes of fruit, — peaches and grapes and 
plums. v 

“ Do you think it is pretty, Pansy ? ” asked 
Mrs. Scott. 

Pansy could hardly speak. 

“ I think it must look like Aladdin’s palace,” 
she said, at last. 

“ Oh, dear, no,” laughed Mrs. Scott, “ not so 
fine as that. I’m not going to have any flow- 
ers but pansies, to-night,” she continued, “ and 
I’ll arrange them now, so you can see how they 
will look, and why I want so many.” 


2 8 


PANSY BILLINGS . 


Then she took Pansy into another room, 
where, on a table, were a dozen little narrow, 
semicircular dishes, made of tin and painted 
green ; they were not quite an inch deep, and 
less than an inch wide. They were filled with 
wet sand. Into this sand Mrs. Scott stuck the 
pansies, filling each little dish as full as it 
would hold. Then she arranged them on the 
table, in and out among the dishes of fruit, 
till it looked as if one long wreath of pansies 
had been laid on the table-cloth. The tins 
were so low they did not show at all. When 
it was done, Pansy gave a little scream of 
delight. 

“ I don’t believe there was ever anything so 
beautiful in the world before,” she said. 

At this Mrs. Scott laughed again, but in a 
moment more she looked sober. It always 
made her sad to be reminded how little the 
very poor people in this world can know about 
the beautiful things which cost money. 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


2 9 


“ The pansies are the prettiest things of them 
all, dear,” she replied, “ and everybody can have 
pansies.” 

“Yes’m,” said Pansy; but in her heart she 
thought, “ The pansies did not look so pretty in 
my box.” 

Poverty makes little children wise before their 
time, in matters of money. Even while Pansy 
was most absorbed in looking at the beautiful 
house, and the dinner-table with the pansy 
wreaths on it, she never forgot the silver 
dollar in her hand. A dollar was a great 
deal of money to Pansy. She had never be- 
fore had more than five cents at a time. She 
knew, too, how much a dollar seemed to her 
mother. 

“ Two cents apiece for all my pansies,” she 
thought. “ I might have sold them before, if I 
had only known.” When she went home, she 
gave her mother the dollar. Mrs. Billings was 
as astonished as Pansy. She had never thought 


30 


PANSY BILLINGS . 


before that a flower as common as a pansy could 
be worth so much money. 

“ Why, you’ve had a dollar’s worth of them 
many a time before, haven’t you, Pansy ? ” said 
she. 

“Yes, indeed, lots of times,” said Pansy. 
“ But I’ve got the seed of all I didn’t cut. Mr. 
McCloud told me to save it. Next summer we 
can have a big bed.” 

“ I don’t know as Mr. McCloud would like us 
to sell them,” said Mrs. Billings. 

“ Oh,” said Pansy, crestfallen, “ perhaps he 
wouldn’t. But sometimes he doesn’t have as 
many as people want. Then he wouldn’t care.” 

v 

The upshot of this conversation, and of one 
or two talks that Pansy had with old Archie, 
was that next year there was not only a big 
pansy bed in Mrs. Billings’s yard, but a bed 
of carnations, and one of rose-geranium. Old 
Archie was only too glad to help Pansy to earn 
a little money, and his own business was so 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


31 


large he could well afford to help a poor 
neighbor. 

He taught Pansy, and also her mother, how 
to take care of the plants, and make the most 
of them. He showed Pansy how to tie up little 
buttonhole bouquets with wire; a single carna- 
tion and two pansies, with rose-geranium leaves, 
made a pretty little bouquet, for which Pansy 
got ten cents, and sometimes she sold ten in 
one day. 

Before Pansy knew it, little girl as she was, 
she had become a sort of florist in a small way. 
Mrs. Scott’s friends had all heard about her, and 
liked to patronize her. Her name, Pansy, also 
helped her. It pleased everybody’s fancy; and 
everybody was glad to give a lift to such an 
industrious little creature. As the years went 
on, and she had to spend many hours each day 
in school, it grew to be no small task for her to 
keep her flower beds in order, and make all her 
plants do their utmost. Each year old Archie 


32 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


gave her new things, and her beds grew fuller 
and fuller. She was always up by daylight, at 
work in her garden ; and she often worked there 
after dark. All this outdoor work kept her 
healthy, and by the time she was fifteen she was 
as strong and large as most girls at eighteen. 

Ally-boy, too, was a fine, hearty boy, and 
helped her very much; but he did not love it 
as Pansy did. He worked only for the money. 
Pansy used to say, sometimes, she wished she 
need not sell a single blossom ; she loved every 
one, and missed every one she cut and sent 
away. 

How proud old Archie was of her, and her 
success, could hardly be told in words. She 
did nothing without consulting him ; and gradm 
ally it came about that he did few things without 
consulting her. She read aloud to him all the 
new books and pamphlets he got which related 
to the florist business, and there was not a day 
that she did not go with him through his hot- 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


33 


houses and gardens. She called him “uncle 
Archie” now, and nothing would have offended 
the old man more than to have any one question 
the relationship. He was not strong now. No- 
body knew his age. It was a weakness of old 
Archie’s never to tell it; but it must have been 
much greater than any one supposed, for all of a 
sudden he began to walk very feebly, and to look 
like an aged man. 

It cut Pansy to the heart to see that, when he 
stooped to pick a flower, he could not straighten 
up again without a groan, and that day after day 
he would sit on the terrace, in the sun, and do 
nothing, watching his workmen all day, and find- 
ing fault with everything they did. 

“ I’m afraid uncle Archie is failing, mother,” 
she said one day. “ Do you see how bent he 
walks ? And he doesn’t lift his hand to a spade 
or trowel now.” 

“Yes,” replied Mrs. Billings, “he looks ninety, 
if he’s a day. He can’t last long.” 


34 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


The tears filled Pansy’s eyes. Putting on her 
hat, she went over to the garden. Old Archie 
was sitting, languid, in his chair, in the porch of 
the little two-roomed cottage where he had lived 
all alone for forty years. A new Florist Cata- 
logue lay on his knees. 

“ Parnsy,” he said, as she came up the path, 
“ there’s a new parnsy we maun ha’ ! It’s a 
big braw name they gie it,” and he pointed to 
the name in the catalogue. “ An’ I’m a-thinkin’, 
my bairn, o’ puttin’ up a sign ’t the place. It’s 
not had ony name ’t it a’ these years. I thocht 
I’d ca’ it the ‘ Parnsy Gardens.’ Is’t na’ a guid 
name? ’Twould luik well, I’m thinkin’, wi’ a 
new gate, an’ maybe a parnsy or twa painted 
abuve the warrds.” 

“ Why, that would be lovely, uncle Archie,” 
cried Pansy, delighted with the idea. “ That’s 
just what it ought to be called, but everybody 
says there are no such pansies in the whole 
country as yours, — ” 


PANSY BILLINGS. 35 

“ Not so mony kinds in any ane mon’s place,” 
interrupted old Archie. 

“ No, indeed,” said Pansy, “ I was reading 
that to you, you know, in that pamphlet, the 
other day. Don’t you remember, it said that 
the finest pansies, and the greatest variety, at 
that Horticultural Show, were, as had been 
the case for many years, exhibited by Mr. Mc- 
Cloud ? ” 

The old man nodded, with a look of tender 
pride spreading over his face. 

“ Eh, eh, bairn,” he said, “ fine warrds a’ ! 
Fine warrds ! ” Then glancing up at her archly, 
he said, “ An’ the bonniest parnsy o’ a’ winna 
gae to the show ! ” 

Pansy flushed and laughed, and, taking the 
old man’s hand in hers, said, “ Don’t spoil me, 
uncle Archie.” 

“ Na reesk o’t,” he said, “ na reesk. “ Yer na’ 
the kind.” 

While the new sign was being painted, old 


3 6 PANSY BILLINGS. 

Archie seemed more like himself than he had 
done for months. 

He haunted the painter’s shop, and nearly 
drove the man crazy by his multiplicity of direc- 
tions about the pansies which were to be painted 
in the corners of the signboard, — a purple, a 
yellow, a black, and a white, all on a green 
ground. 

They were painted over four times before he 
would accept them, or allow that they bore the 
least resemblance to pansies. At last, more in 
despair than in satisfaction, he consented to 
let them stand, contenting himself with saying : 

“ I daur say the maist o’ mankind ’ud ca’ ’em 
parnsies,” and it was the utmost of commenda- 
tion the wearied painter could extract from him. 

The new gate and sign fronted Mrs. Billings’s 
door, and the old man used to sit there by the 
hour, contemplating it. It seemed to give him 
great delight to read it aloud to Pansy. 

“ The ‘ Parnsy Gardens,’ do you like the 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


3 7 


name, my bairn ? The ‘ Parnsy Gardens.’ 
Does it na’ sound weel ? Ay ! Ay, it sounds 
weel ! ” and he would gaze at Pansy with a long, 
inquiring look of fond affection. 

“ He’s named it for you, Pansy, don’t you 
think so ? ” said Mrs. Billings one day. 

“No, indeed!” exclaimed Pansy, astonished. 
“ Why, it’s for the pansies ! The garden’s 
always been celebrated for its pansies. I won- 
der he did not call it so before.” 

Mrs. Billings was not convinced, however; 
and she was by no means the only one who had 
had the thought. It began to be said in the 
town that old Archie had named his gardens 
after his pet and favorite, Pansy Billings, and 
one day somebody jokingly taxed the old man 
with it. 

“ An’ I might ha’ done waur,” he answered, 
with a slow, shrewd smile. “ I might ha’ done 
waur. Ye wad aiblins tell me how a mon ’d do 
better ? ” 


38 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


Very fast uncle Archie failed. Maple leaves 
were turning red when the new signboard was 
put up; and, before the trees were bare, the 
old man had taken to his bed. Pansy or her 
mother stayed with him all the time, one by 
day, and the other by night. He seemed to 
have dismissed from his mind all care about 
his affairs, and lay there, like a little child, 
peacefully going to sleep. When Pansy would 
ask him some questions about the plants, he 
would reply, “ Weel, weel, bairn, ye ken what 
to do ; do as ye like ! It’s a’ the same to me 
noo.” 

He suffered so little that Pansy could not 
believe he was so near his end, and was greatly 
surprised one night when her mother said to 
her, “ Pansy, I don’t like to be left alone with 
uncle Archie to-night. You’d better stay. You 
can lie on the lounge in the kitchen, and if he’s 
worse I’ll call you.” 

It was near morning when Pansy was 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


39 


waked by her mother’s calling, “ Come quick, 
Pansy ! ” 

It was not half a minute before Pansy was by 
the bedside, just in time to hear the old man 
say, half unconsciously, “ Guid bairn ! Parnsy 
Gardens.” They were his last words. In a 
moment more the loving, aged heart had ceased 
to beat. 

A great surprise was in store for Pansy. By 
a will, drawn up only a few months before his 
death, old Archie had bequeathed to her his 
whole property, — the Pansy Gardens, the little 
house, and a few thousand dollars in the bank. 
Pansy was overwhelmed. She copld not accus- 
tom herself to the idea of it. In her humility, 
she at first doubted her ability to carry on the 
business; and yet it was the very thing of all 
others she had often thought she would choose 
to 'do. 

As she looked back, she could see that the 
plan had been in old Archie’s mind for two 


40 


PANSY BILLINGS. 


years, and that he had been steadily educating 
her for it. 

It was not long before she found her heart 
full of joy in the prospect. Every difficulty was 
now smoothed away from her mother’s path. 
Ally-boy could realize the dream of his life, and 
go to college ; Alice could go to a good school ; 
no more poverty for them. With ordinary good 
luck, and industrious care, Pansy knew that 
she could make the gardens yield a yearly in- 
come more than sufficient for their comfort- 
able living. 

The man who had for many years been old 
Archie’s head gardener begged to be kept on 
in his place. 

“ Indeed, miss, an’ if ye’ll keep me on, I’ll 
serve ye as well as ever I served the old man.” 
And Pansy was thankful to keep him. 

So here we leave her at seventeen, florist and 
proprietor, in her own right, of a prosperous 
business and a good home. 


PANSY BILLINGS . 


41 


And all this had come about from — a 
dropped pansy? 

Not quite. It had 'come about, first, from the 
dropped pansy, but after that from a little girl’s 
affectionate good will, good cheer, honesty, and 
industry, — qualities which never fail, in the 
long run, to win. 





POPSY 


THE STORY OF A TENNESSEE GIRL 



POPS Y. 


CHAPTER I. 
popsy’s table-cloths. 

Popsy was a Tennessee girl. She lived on 
a farm, which lay along the banks of a beau- 
tiful little stream named Clifty Creek. The 
people in that region always said “crik” for 
creek. 

Popsy’s father was a stone-mason, but there 
was not much work for a stone-mason to do, in 
that part of the country, except in the spring 
and autumn, and if it had not been for the 
farm, there would have been hard times often 
in Popsy’s house. As it was, they did not 
have any luxuries, or any money to spare, and 


45 


4 6 


POPSY. 


they all had to work, but they were comfortable, 
had plenty to eat, and had a very good time. 
There were six of the children, — three boys 
and three girls, — and Popsy was the youngest 
but one. Her name was Mary, but she was 
always called either Pop, or Popsy. I suppose 
that must be Tennesseean for Polly, which is 
everywhere a common nickname for Mary. 

Their house was one story high, built of 
sawed logs, — like a log cabin, only higher; and 
the logs were covered inside and out by planks 
of black walnut wood, all cut and sawed on 
the farm. 

This made the inside of the house very 
pretty, rough as it was ; the walls, floors, and 
ceilings, being all of the black walnut boards, 
were a beautiful brown color. 

A straight stone walk was laid from the 
front door down to the gate, and on each side 
of this stone walk was a row of trees, — ever- 
green trees, and a tree the country people 


POPS Y, 


47 


called the lily-of-the-valley tree, because it had 
large, purple flowers, shaped like lilies. These 
trees were arranged in regular alternation, first 
an evergreen, then a lily-of-the-valley tree, and 
so on, all the way down ; they made a beau- 
tiful shade in the summer, and the air was 
sweet with the perfume of the great purple 
blossoms. 

This stone walk was the pride of Popsy’s 
father’s heart. He was far more particular 
about its being kept clean than he was about 
the floors inside the house. On those, he had 
a bad habit of spitting, to his wife’s great dis- 
gust; but he was never known to spit on the 
stone walk ; and whenever he had been sitting 
in the porch whittling, which he always did 
when he got into a brown study about things, 
if any of the whittlings flew on the stone walk, 
he would immediately go and get the broom 
and sweep them off on to the ground. There 
they might lie, year in and year out, and it 


48 


POPSY. 


wouldn’t trouble him ; but not on the precious 
white stone walk. Not a single shaving must 
be seen on that. 

In each corner of the yard was a big cherry- 
tree, and there were rows of peach-trees for a 
great distance along the road. Peaches were 
as plenty in this part of Tennessee as apples 
are in New England. When a traveller stopped 
to rest his horse, or to give him water, any- 
where along the road, he would generally find 
a peach-tree at hand, from which he could pick 
all the peaches he wanted. 

The kitchen was in a separate house, joined 
to the other by a long, covered porch ; in a 
room opening off the kitchen the negroes slept, 
— there were usually three of these. They were 
slaves, but they did not belong to Popsy’s 
father. He was a German, and always said he 
would never own a slave. It did not trouble 
his conscience, however, to borrow them from 
his brother-in-law, who lived about three miles 


POPSY. 


49 


away, had more slaves than he knew what to 
do with, and was always glad to have a few of 
them working for their board in any family 
where they would be well treated. 

So Popsy grew up surrounded by faithful, 
affectionate negro women. The whole family 
worked together, — master, mistress, children, 
slaves, all side by side, out-of-doors or indoors, 
as it might be, in the tobacco field or sugar 
grove, kitchen or dining-room. Except in the 
one matter of eating, there were no distinctions 
between black and white, employers and slaves, 
in hard-working farmers’ families in Tennessee, 
in those days. 

One of the earliest things Popsy could rec- 
ollect was working in the tobacco field, by the 
side of old “ aunt Carline,” who showed her 
how to “sucker off,” as it was called. 

To “sucker off” was to pick off from the 
tobacco - plants all young shoots, or suckers, 
which were growing out of the main stem, and 


50 


POPSY. 


which would take the strength from the big 
leaves. Even a little child only five years old 
could do a pretty good day’s work at this, after 
she had been shown how to do it. It was only 
a sort of play. 

“ Aunt Carline ” was a very old negro woman. 
Her head was so white the children used to 
say it looked like a woolly sheep’s head. She 
had nursed and brought up all Popsy’s brothers 
and sisters ; and as for Popsy herself, she was 
hardly out of “ aunt Carline’s ” sight till she 
was twelve years old. They all loved the old 
negro woman as if she had been their mother ; 
in fact, they never thought of going to ask their 
mother for anything, if “aunt Carline” could be 
found. It was strange they loved her so, for 
she used to box their ears, right and left, when- 
ever they displeased her, and give them many 
a hard whipping, when they got into mischief, 
or refused to eat the corn dumplings she had 
made for their dinner. 


POPSY. 


51 


There was a big sugar-maple grove two miles 
from the house, and in this the children had 
great good times every spring, when the sugar- 
ing season- came round. They had to work 
pretty hard, carrying the sap from the trees to 
the kettles in which it was to be boiled down 
to sugar, but they did not mind the work if 
they could have their pay in sugar. Three 
times a day, they used to go over to the grove, 
and “ tote sugar-water,” as they called it. They 
had made out of bent hickory saplings a sort 
of yoke, which fitted on the back of the neck; 
a pad of sheepskin was put underneath it, where 
it rested on the neck, so as to keep it from 
chafing the skin, and from each end of this 
yoke a bucket was swung ; and it made a pretty 
picture when the children, four or five of them 
at once, came out of the maple wood, with their 
yokes on their shoulders, the buckets full of 
sap, going carefully, for fear they should spill 
a drop. There was another use to which the 


52 


POPSY. 


sweet sap was put, in farmers’ houses in that 
country. They boiled in it the twigs of the 
spicewood, and made a tea which they thought 
tasted quite as good as real tea; and was a 
great deal better, for one reason, — that it didn’t 
cost anything, except the children’s time to 
gather the bunches of the spicewood twigs, 
and the sap. 

Popsy’s mother never allowed any one but 
herself to superintend the final “stirring off” 
of the sugar. She thought nobody else could 
do it just right. This was a great occasion; 
the children all gathered round the big kettles, 
which were hung from crossed poles in a 
cleared space on one side of the grove. In 
their hands they held out pieces of bark as 
long and wide as shingles; as the sugar slowly 
thickened, their mother would dip out ladles 
full of it and drop it on the pieces of bark. 
Then the children danced around, blowing the 
bubbling sugar, till it cooled enough for them 


POPSY. 


53 


to dip their fingers in, and taste it. It was a 
grand frolic, and a pretty sight, too, of a bright, 
sunny, spring morning. 

This was the best of all the things which 
came in spring-time. 

In the autumn, came another grand frolic 
time, — the chestnutting. There was a long, 
ridgelike hill, about a mile from the house, 
which they called Chestnut Ridge. It was like 
a forest of chestnut-trees, — thirty acres, thick 
grown with chestnuts, and nothing else ; old, 
gnarled trees, half-bare, and dead, they were so 
old ; and copses of young trees, all waving 
green leaves, too young to bear nuts. Bushels 
upon bushels of chestnuts the children gathered 
here every autumn. The greater part of the 
nuts had to be sold ; but that did not spoil 
the fun of gathering them, and eating all they 
could, as they went along. At last, one year, 
their father said, “ Well, children, you’ll have 
a new kind of chestnutting this year; you can 


54 


POPSY. 


walk round among the top boughs and pick 
off the nuts.” 

What could he mean ? The children thought 
he was joking ; but he was not. 

“You’ll see,” he said; and that was all he 
would tell them. A few days later, he said, 
“ Go up to the chestnut wood this afternoon, 
children, and see how many nuts you can get.” 

After dinner, away they all raced ; and sure 
enough, when they reached the ridge, there 
they saw a dozen great chestnut-trees cut 
down, lying on the ground, and they could, as 
their father had said, walk round among the 
topmost boughs and pick the nuts out of all 
the burs that the frost had opened. 

At first they thought that this was better 
fun than shaking the boughs with a long pole, 
and knocking the nuts down ; the nuts looked 
so pretty, nestling by twos and threes in their 
white satin cases, like jewels in a satin-lined 
jewel-case, and it was droll work climbing in 


POPSY. 


55 


and out, among and over the tangled boughs 
and branches of the fallen trees. But before 
long they began to think that they would 
never again gather nuts from these trees, and 
that made them sad. They knew almost every 
tree in the grove, and they did not want to 
lose one. When they heard their father’s 
plan, they felt still worse. He had made up 
his mind to cut down the whole chestnut 
grove, and turn the land into flax fields, whicjh 
would bring him much more money, — for 
chestnuts were so plenty in Tennessee they 
were worth very little in market. He promised 
to leave a few trees standing, so that the chil- 
dren could get some nuts every autumn, but 
this did not console them ; and it was, after 
all, rather a sorrowful “ nutting time ” they had 
that year. Every two or three days, their 
father would cut down a new batch of trees, 
and the children would go over and pick out 
the nuts from the burs, and say good-by to 


5 6 popsy. 

the trees. Then the trees were sawed and 
chopped into firewood, brought over to the 
house, and before spring all burned up, and 
that was the end of the chestnut grove. 

But you will wonder what all this has to 
do with Popsy’s table-cloths. Nothing at all; 
only I wanted to give a little idea of the sort 
of life Popsy led, how she had always had to 
work herself, and had seen everybody around 
her working. She did not know anything of 
any other kind of life, except a working life. 

Even the rare pleasures and recreations she 
had, she generally paid for beforehand by some 
extra piece of work. Once when she was a 
little thing, not five years old, she, and the 
brother and sister next older than herself, had 
a very great treat, a two days’ holiday, and 
visit to their uncle’s who lived three miles 
away; and this they earned by a whole day’s 
work in the tobacco field. One morning their 
father said to them: 


POPSY. 


57 


“ If you three youngsters’ll sucker off that 
whole tobacco patch clean and good, and pick 
off every worm that’s in the patch, you can 
go to your uncle’s and stay till Sunday night.” 

Popsy was then not quite five, her sister 
Liddy was seven, and her brother Jim nine. 

To go to their uncle’s was like going to a 
city ! there was so much to be seen there : a 
big plantation, dozens of negroes, old and 
young, a large house with many rooms in it, 
and furniture which to them seemed very fine ; 
and last, not least, a half dozen cousins, boys 
and girls, near their own age. The oldest 
daughter was twenty, and she had gone into 
the silk-worm business. She had a room 
built on purpose for her worms, and big glass 
windows in the side, through which you could 
look in, and watch everything: worms eating 
leaves, or spinning themselves up into cocoons, 
moths flying about, laying eggs, little piles of 
eggs just hatching out into worms not bigger 


53 


POPSY. 


than pin-heads, — it was like fairyland to the 
children to watch it all. Their cousin had a 
spinning-wheel, too, on which she wound off 
the silk from the cocoons herself, and she had 
made a good deal of money by selling the silk. 
It was thought a wonderful thing by all the 
people in the region, and Popsy was exceed- 
ingly proud of her clever cousin. 

How those children did work in that tobacco 
patch ! Long after Popsy was an old woman, 
she remembered it just as vividly as if it had 
been yesterday. When they thought it was 
all done, they called their father to look at it; 
and they stood by, anxiously watching to see 
if he would find it all right. Liddy was so 
afraid he would not be satisfied, and they would 
not get their visit, that the tears rolled down 
her cheek as she stood watching, while he 
went from hill to hill, examining each plant, 
and lifting up the leaves. 

“ All right, children,” he said, “ not a sucker 


POPSY. 


59 


nor a worm to be seen ! Be off, now ! ” and 
away they scampered to have their best home- 
spun suits put on, — the two little girls, — clean 
sunbonnets, also of homespun calico. They 
went barefoot, carrying their shoes in their 
hands, to put on when they reached their 
uncle’s house. It would have been a great 
extravagance to have walked the whole three 
miles in them. And it was only a penance to 
have to put them on at the end of the journey. 
Shoes are torture to children that are in the 
habit of running barefoot. 

This was the sort of life that farmers’ chil- 
dren lived in Tennessee, thirty years ago. I 
dare say it will sound forlorn to most of the 
children who read this story ; but I can tell 
them that they will be very lucky children if 
they always enjoy the days in the kind of life 
they lead now, as much as Popsy and her 
brothers and sisters enjoyed theirs then. 

There is one thing that Popsy learned to 


6o 


POPSY. 


do, of which I have not yet told you ; and now 
I am coming to the table-cloths. She learned 
to spin and weave. In those days, farmers’ 
wives and daughters used to make, with their 
own hands, not only all the material for all the 
clothes they wore, but all the cotton and linen 
they needed for sheets, pillow-cases, towels, and 
table-cloths. It is marvellous to read accounts 
of the numbers of yards of cloth, woollen, cot- 
ton, and linen, which a woman would make in 
one year, besides doing all the work of the 
house. It seems as if there must have been 
more than twenty-four hours to a day, in that 
period. Every good housewife prided herself 
on having chests full of things she had spun 
and woven. Two good woollen or linsey- 
woolsey gowns, and two cotton gowns each 
year, she made for herself, and for all her girls. 
Coats and trousers, also, for the men and the 
boys ; and coverlets, blankets, sheets, table- 
cloths, towels, by the dozen. 


POPSY. 


6 1 


Popsy had a maiden aunt, her father's sister, 
who lived with them, and seemed to Popsy 
never to do anything but spin and weave. 
“ Aunt Linny ” was famous all the country 
round about for weaving the finest and most 
beautiful patterns in both linen and cotton. 
She it was who taught Popsy to sit at the 
loom and weave, when she was such a little 
thing she could not reach the treadles with her 
feet, but had to jump down off the stool each 
time they were to be worked back and forth. 
And so it came about that, as Popsy grew up, 
her greatest ambition was to weave as fine 
linen and cotton as her mother and her aunt 
Linny wove. When she saw a flax field, with 
its pretty blue flowers all nodding in the sun, 
she didn’t think, as you or I would, “ Oh ! what 
lovely blue flowers! How they smile, and they 
are as blue as the sky ! ” She ran her eye 
over the field to see how big it was, and how 
much flax could be got out of it for spinning. 


62 


POPSY. 


One summer,- when Popsy was in her thir- 
teenth year, as she was roaming over the farm, 
she saw in the distance a great stretch of beau- 
tiful blue color; she knew at once it must be 
a flax field in full flower. 

“ Oh, whose splendid flax field is that ? ” 
thought Popsy. “ I wish it was daddy’s ! ” 
(The children in that part of Tennessee always 
called their fathers “ daddy,” never “ papa,” or 
“ father.”) “ I wonder why daddy didn’t plant 
any flax this year! Pm going over, anyhow, to 
find out whose it is.” So Popsy trudged along, 
till she came to the flax field, and it turned out 
to belong to a man she knew very well, “ uncle 
Eli,” as she had always called him, though he 
was not a relation of hers. But there are some 
men and women who are always called uncle 
and aunt, by the whole world ; and Eli Hyer 
was one of these. He was “uncle Eli Hyer” 
to everybody within twenty miles of his farm. 

As Popsy stood leaning over the rail fence, 


POPSY. 63 

looking with covetous eyes at the flax, uncle 
Eli came along. 

“Want some posies, Pop?” he said. “ I’m 
a-raisin’ it fur seed, but you kin hev a hand- 
ful ef yer want ’em. They are pooty, an’ no 
mistake.” 

It never crossed his mind that the child 
could be looking so longingly at the field for 
any other reason than for the blossoms. 

“ O uncle Eli ! ” exclaimed Popsy. “ Be ye 
only raisin’ it for the seed ? Ain’t your folks 
goin’ to pull it to spin ? ” 

“ No,” replied the old man. “ They ain’t 
goin’ to do no flax spinnin’ this year, to my 
house. Fur a wonder, the wimmin says they’ve 
got all the linen they want. I’m jest goin’ to 
take the seed out er this field. It’s a payin’ 
crop for the seed.” 

“ Yes, I know ’tis,” said Popsy. “ Daddy had 
some for seed last year. But we hain’t got a 
bit on the farm this year.” 


6 4 


POPSY. 


“You hain’t?” exclaimed uncle Eli. “Wall, 
what was the reason o’ that? I never know’d 
your folks not to hev flax afore ! ” 

“We always did, till this summer, but we 
hain’t got a mite now,” answered Popsy ; “ that’s 
why I was a-lookin’ at your’n, an’ wishin’ we 
hed it.” 

“ What on airth do you want with flax, Pop ? ” 
asked uncle Eli, thinking she was a queer little 
girl, to care whether her father had one kind of 
crop or another in his fields. “What do you 
want with flax ? ” 

“ Table-cloths,” answered Popsy, curtly, purs- 
ing up her little mouth with an important 
expression. 

“Table-cloths!” ejaculated uncle Eli Hyer. 
“Wall, I declar’, Pop, you don’t mean to say 
yer a-gettin’ ready to be married, a’ready ! ” 

Popsy turned scarlet. She was pretty angry 
with uncle Eli, but she did not want to vex 
him, for she had already made up her mind 


POPSY. 65 

to have some of his flax. So she answered, 
pleasantly : 

“ Can’t a girl make table-cloths without get- 
ting married ? Aunt Linny’s real old, an’ she 
ain’t married ; an’ she’s got a trunk full ; per- 
fectly beautiful ones, — six o’ the three-leaved 
Jean pattern; and I know how to weave that’s 
well’s she does.” 

Uncle Eli put one foot up on the lower rail 
of the fence, to steady himself, while he threw 
back his head and laughed. 

“Well, Pop,” he said, “you are a smart young 
un, that’s a fact! You kin hev this whole field 
of flax, to do what you’re a mind to with, if 
you’ll shake out the seed for me fust ! ” 

“ Bargain ! ” said Popsy, briskly. “ Bargain, 
uncle Eli. That’s jest what I was gettin’ ready 
to ask ye, if I couldn’t hev some on’t.” 

“ How’ll ye get it over to your place ? ” asked 
uncle Eli. “ It’s right smart o’ ways from 
here” 


66 


POPSY. 


“ Tote it,” replied Popsy, confidently. “ That’s 
no great things.” 

“ It’s a good half mile,” said the old man. 

“’Tain’t fur,” said Popsy, bounding off. “I’ll 
be here in time for the seed. Don’t yer go 
back on me, now,” and she was off like a deer, 
in her haste to run and tell her mother of her 
good luck. 

“ Reckon she’ll forgit all about it,” said uncle 
Eli to himself, as he walked away. “ She’s the 
smartest young un Dave Meadows’s got in the 
whole batch. But totin’ green flax a half mile 
’ud be hard on them thin shoulders o’ hern. I 
allow her folks won’t thank me for the job, ef 
she undertakes it.” 

Popsy burst breathless into the kitchen where 
her mother and old “ aunt Carline ” were busy 
getting dinner. 

“ Mammy,” she cried, “ Oh, mammy ! uncle 
Eli’s done given me all the flax in his field.” 

Her mother turned a bewildered look upon 


POPSY. 67 

her. “ Whatever does the child mean, now ! ” 
she said. “ Air ye crazy, Pop ? ” 

“ Guess not,” retorted Popsy. “ Pve got the 
promise o’ the flax, though, sure ; uncle Eli he 
was a-raisin’ it jest for seed, he said, an’ if I’d 
git off the seed for him, I might hev all the 
flax I wanted. You see ef I don’t tote right 
smart on’t over here, and make me some table- 
cloths.” 

“ I expect yer’ll about kill yerself, Pop,” said 
her mother, languidly ; but old “ aunt Carline,” 
shaking with laughter, said, “ Pop’s smart, she 
is. I’ll help ye, honey.” 

“ Don’t want any help,” cried Popsy. “ Pm 
goin’ to do it, every mite on’t, myself, from fust 
to last, an’ then they’ll be my table-cloths, won’t 
they? It’s table-cloths I’m goin’ to make, jest 
like aunt Linny’s.” 

This was July. Early in August it would 
be time to shake out the seed, and pull the 
flax. Many a time, as uncle Eli passed the flax 


68 


POPSY. 


field, he paused, and looked at it, wondered if 
Popsy would hold to her bargain, and laughed 
at the recollection of her excited face. 

“’Spect you thought I wa’n’t a-comin’, didn’t 
yer, now ? ” sounded in his ears, in a merry, 
roguish voice, one day, just as he had been 
thinking about Popsy and the flax field. “ Here 
I am, yer see. Where’s yer cloths to shake out 
them seeds? Pm goin’ to begin right now.” 
He turned, and there stood Popsy, her face 
laughing all over at his surprise. 

“ Wall, Pop, I didn’t reely think you’d do it,” 
he replied. “ Be yer folks willin’ ? ” 

“ I guess so,” said Pop, carelessly. “ I told 
’em. Mam said I’d kill myself, she ’spected. 
But I’ll resk it. I kin stop when I’m beat out.” 

In good earnest she set to work, shook and 
beat out the tiny black seeds on to cloths spread 
on the ground, then gathered them up carefully 
and put them into wooden buckets. 

Then she tugged away at the flax-plants, and 



“‘I WOULD RUN ALL THE WAY HOME WITH IT,’ SAID POPSY.” 


































































POPS K 


6 9 


pulled them up by the roots ; threw them down 
in big piles, tied them up into bundles, with 
wisps of the flax itself. When she had eight 
big bundles, she tied them all together with a 
stout rope she had brought. The two ends of 
the rope she knotted together, to hold in front 
of her, to steady the load on her shoulders. 
Then she sat down on the ground, close to the 
big bundle of flax, slipped the noose of the rope 
round her neck, pulled the bundle up on her 
back, and staggered up to her feet. After she 
once got upon her feet, the load did not feel 
heavy. She thought to herself, “ Pooh ! this 
is nothing! I could run all the way home with 
it ! ” But, before she had gone many rods, she 
changed her mind. Every bone and every 
muscle in her body ached, and she was glad to 
sit down and rest. “ Got too much for one 
time!” she said to herself. “Next time I’ll 
know better; but I’ll tote this, or die fur’t ! ” 
and she pulled along, with the perspiration 


70 


POPSY. 


streaming down her forehead, and her cheeks 
scarlet. It was a hot August day ; and in 
Tennessee, August heat is terrible. Every few 
rods she had to stop, sit down on the ground, 
slip the bundle off her back, and rest a long 
time. 

“ The longest half mile I ever walked,” said 
Popsy, as at last she threw down her bundle of 
flax by the spring, in the rear of her house. 
She wanted to have it near the spring, so as to 
have plenty of water to put on the flax. 

You see, Popsy’s work with the flax had only 
just begun when she had, as she called it, 
“toted” the plants home. There was nearly 
a month’s work more to be done on it, before 
it would be ready to spin. 

It took her a week to “ tote ” home the quan- 
tity of flax she wanted. Every day she carried 
one big bundle ; and the last day she carried 
two. “ Aunt Carline ” begged to go and help 
her bring it, but Popsy would not hear a word 


POPSY, 


71 


of any help from any one. These were to be 
her own table-cloths, from the very ground up 
to the last thread. 

Now I will try to tell you, as well as I can, 
never having seen the process, only having 
heard aunt Popsy describe it, what she did with 
her flax next. The first thing was to spread it 
all out on the ground, in a thin layer, and turn 
water over it. Here it had to lie fourteen days, 
to rot. If it rained in that time, or if heavy 
dews fell at night, so much the better, — that 
made less work to be done. If it did not rain, 
water must be turned over the flax carefully, as 
often as every second or third day. The fine 
threads in the stalks would not come out all 
right for spinning, if it were not evenly and thor- 
oughly wetted. Every morning and evening, 
for fourteen days, Popsy went and examined her 
flax, to see how it was getting on; and never 
once did she forget to turn on the water when 
it was needed. At the end of the fortnight it 


72 


POPSY. 


had all turned a dark color, and was a wet, sod- 
den mass. 

Then she took it up, and again tied it in 
bundles; this time in small bundles, no larger 
than she could easily hold in one hand. These 
were put through a machine called the “ break.” 
This machine has six sharp wooden knives, 
three above and three below, their edges com- 
ing together. Between these sharp edges the 
flax was put, and the knives worked up and 
down, till the flax was all broken and bruised 
into fine shreds. 

Next, after the. “break,” came the “swingling- 
board.” This was a big board, driven firmly 
into the ground; the bundles of flax were held 
in the left hand, firmly, laid across the top of 
this board, and beaten long and hard with a 
huge wooden knife, a foot long; this knife was 
called the swingling-knife. By this time, after 
all this rotting, breaking, and swingling, the 
flax was pretty finely shredded, but not quite 


POPSY. 


7 3 

fine enough. One more thing had to be done. 
It must be hackled. This was done by drawing 
it between two thin, square pieces of wood, set 
thick with sharp nails. Popsy thought this the 
prettiest work of all ; as the flax was drawn back 
and forth between these surfaces of sharp iron 
points, it became almost as fine as hair, and a 
great bunch of it, finely hackled, and ready to 
spin, looked like nothing so much as a head of 
brown hair, all tangled. When Popsy’s flax 
was ready for the wheel it was just about the 
color of her own hair, and looked, it must be 
confessed, very much like it, tangles and all. 

Next came the spinning. That was done on 
a small wheel, made on purpose for spinning 
flax. This also Popsy greatly enjoyed, and was 
sorry when it was all done. The weaving was 
harder work ; and for the use of the linen-loom 
she had to wait, and take her chance when no- 
body else wanted it. Sometimes she got almost 
out of patience waiting. It seemed to her that 


74 


POPSY. 


her mother and aunt Linny would never be 
done their weaving. But she persevered. As 
often as they took out a piece of finished linen 
from the loom, there was Popsy, all ready, with 
her “ Please let me weave a piece, now,” so 
pleadingly they could not resist her, even if 
their own work did have to wait. 

But Popsy’s pile of table-cloths grew very 
slowly. It was early in October when she 
began the first one, and it was the middle 
of March when she finished the last, — eleven 
big table-cloths, as strong as iron, and of the 
prettiest patterns known in the whole country. 
After the table-cloths were done, she wove four- 
teen big towels, a yard long, with fringe at each 
end, four inches long, and knotted, and of these 
she was as proud as of the table-cloths. 

“Uncle Eli” often dropped in, in the course 
of the winter, to see her father and mother, and 
whenever he found Popsy sitting at the loom he 
would tell the story of how she looked the day 


POPSY. 


7 5 


he found her leaning over his fence, gazing long- 
ingly at the flax field. He seemed never tired 
of telling the story over and over, and he would 
always add, when he thought Popsy could not 
hear him : 

“ A smart young un, Mis’ Meadows, a power- 
ful smart young un, that gal ; I allow she’ll git 
on in life ; no fear but what she’ll hev anything 
she sets out to hev.” 

All uncle Eli’s children were grown up, and 
most of them gone away from home ; and the 
old man’s interest in Popsy carried him back 
to the days when his own boys and girls were 
growing up around him. When Popsy showed 
him her store of table-cloths and towels, an idea 
occurred to him. He said nothing, but he 
chuckled inwardly to think what a pleasure 
he could give the child. The next day he was 
going to town with a big load of maple sugar, 
and the thought that had struck him was this : 

“ Ef I make a good trade out er thet sugar, 


;6 


POPSY. 


I’ll jest make the young un a present of a leetle 
trunk o’ her own, to keep her linen in. It ought 
to be hern, alius, an’ not go in with the rest.” 

The sugar sold well, and uncle Eli, with a 
smile on his kindly old face, went from shop to 
shop, to find, the prettiest trunk he could get for 
Popsy to keep her table-cloths in. He was very 
hard to please, and had seen nearly every small 
trunk in the town before he saw the one that 
suited him. 

It was narrow and long, with a high, rounding 
top, and was covered with — what do you think? 
You have none of you ever seen such a trunk; 
but thirty years ago they were thought to be 
very fine. It was covered with goatskin, with 
the hair left on ; and this skin was nailed on 
with rows of brass-headed nails. The goatskin 
was white and brown in spots, more white than 
brown, and there was a little scalloped strip of 
bright red leather all around the edge of the 
lid, that showed when the trunk was shut. On 


POPSY. 


77 


one end, just below the handle, uncle Eli had 
POP printed, in brass-headed nails, just like the 
others on the trunk. You could read it as far 
as you could see the trunk, — POP! in shining 
brass letters. 

When he brought this fine trunk over, and 
gave it to Popsy, she did not know what to 
say, she was so astonished. It seemed to her 
she had all she needed now to set off into the 
world with, — eleven table-cloths, fourteen towels, 
and such a splendid trunk as that. She could 
not thank uncle Eli enough ; and she made him 
go into her bedroom, to see where she was going 
to keep the trunk, standing end out into the 
middle of the room, so that the brass-lettered 
POP would be in plain sight all the time. 

Old “ aunt Carline ” was as pleased as Popsy. 
“ I tell yer, the gal aimed it, she did,” she re- 
marked, confidentially, to uncle Eli ; “ yer ou’ter 
seed her, a-totin’ thet flax, an’ the sweat jest 
a-rollin’ off her like a crik ; an’ she hain’t never 


78 


POPSY. 


let up on it, from thet day to this. She’s the 
smartest young un ever I nussed.” 

Then fearing that Popsy had overheard her, 
she turned quickly, and added : 

“ Now yer see, Pop, jest as yer mammy allers 
telled yer; yer holp yerself an’ yer’ll git holp. 
The Lord he’s holp yer, a-puttin’ it inter uncle 
Eli’s head to guv yer this yere box, but he 
wouldn’t never hev gone done it, ef yer hadn’t 
holp yerself fust.” 


CHAPTER II. 


popsy’s grand journey. 

When Popsy first looked at her new trunk, 
she little dreamed what a long journey it was 
destined soon to take. She had heard her 
father and mother sometimes talking about sell- 
ing the farm, and moving away, but she did 
not believe such a thing would really happen. 
However, happen it did, and in only a few 
months after Popsy got her trunk; and the 
first thing she thought, when she found they 
were really going, was: “Now my trunk will 
be splendid to carry my clothes in.” 

Uncle Eli Hyer had gone first. It was only 
a few weeks after he gave Popsy the trunk 
that he had suddenly sold his farm, and started 
with his whole family for Missouri. Before he 
went, he came over and had a long talk with 


79 


So 


POPSY. 


Popsy’s father, and tried to persuade him to 
go, too. He said there was a better chance 
for farming in Missouri than in Tennessee ; a 
great deal more room, and better land. Mis- 
souri, he said, was the finest State in the West; 
hogs grew twice as fat there as they did in 
Tennessee. 

When Popsy told me the story of her grand 
journey she was an old woman between fifty 
and sixty, but she laughed as she recalled this 
reason uncle Eli had given for moving to Mis- 
souri. 

“ I just wondered, then,” said she, “ if hogs 
could be any fatter than ours were ; and if 
they could, I thought I didn’t want to see ’em ; 
for ours were so fat they couldn’t but just turn 
over. I never did like hogs ; I don’t like ’em 
now; though, I may say, I haven’t ever been 
separated from ’em, not since I was a child.” 

Two of Popsy’s brothers also had gone to 
Missouri, to work on farms ; and they had been 


POPSY. 


8 1 


sending back letters, urging their father to sell 
out, and come and join them. 

“ They didn’t give daddy any peace,” was 
Popsy’s way of putting it, “ till he’d written ’em 
that he’d sell, the first chance he got.” 

So it was finally settled ; and before mid- 
summer the last piece of Mr. Meadows’s farm 
had been sold. They could not find any one 
to take the whole of it ; it went in lots ; three 
hundred acres to one man ; three hundred to 
another; the farming - fields to one, and the 
pasture-lands and the timber to another. 

There was a great excitement at the time, 
throughout the whole region, about moving to 
the West. Everybody seemed to have got 
suddenly discontented with living in Tennessee. 
The news spread from family to family. About 
every day the news came that another had 
decided to go. It seemed as if the people 
were half crazy ; some of them about gave 
away their farms, to get money enough to go 


8 2 


POPS Y. 


with. One persuaded another; relatives and 
friends did not want to be left behind, and 
when the time finally came for starting, the 
party, all told, — men, women, and children, — 
counted up to fifty. 

At Mr. Meadows’s house, the day before they 
were to set off, there was a kind of farewell 
feast. All the people who were going to emi- 
grate were invited, and all the people who 
wanted to bid them good-by; in short, every- 
body for forty miles round. It was the biggest 
entertainment ever seen in that region. Three 
extra negro servants had been cooking night 
and day for a week, to get ready for it ; pies 
and cakes and hams and chickens and turkeys 
were literally piled up in stacks more than 
could be counted. Some people arrived to 
breakfast; some just rode up, alighted for a 
few moments, took a cup of coffee and a bit 
of cake, and drove away again ; some stayed 
to dinner; and the greater part stayed till 


POPSY. 83 

dark and had a dance, — the first time that 
there had ever been dancing in the house. 
“Just for once,” Popsy’s father and mother 
said. “Just for once. There wouldn’t ever 
be such a time again.” 

Nobody counted how many people came and 
went in the course of the day. Nobody could. 
Everybody was too busy. But reckoning as 
well as they could, afterwards, they thought 
there must have been at least six hundred, 
and perhaps seven. 

This was Tuesday. The next morning, at 
ten o’clock, the party of “ movers ” gathered 
in front of the Shiloh meeting-house to make 
their start. That was the place agreed upon, 
and the hour of starting was to be nine. 
Before seven, the wagons began to appear ; 
But it was past ten before the last one arrived, 
and nearly eleven before the cavalcade moved 
off. There were fifty white - covered wagons, 
mostly drawn by oxen ; three comfortable car- 


8 4 


POPSY 


riages for invalids and old people, and a long 
procession of horseback riders. Among these 
last came Popsy, her sister Lyddy, and brother 
Jim. Popsy was so excited and happy she 
could hardly sit on her horse. It was a big 
yellow horse, named Crusoe, — for Robinson 
Crusoe, but the whole name proved too long, so 
they had dropped the Robinson. Popsy and 
her sister wore homespun cotton gowns, and big 
sunbonnets made of the same cloth. Popsy’s 
sunbonnet was generally flapping on her shoul- 
ders behind, for if she kept it on her head she 
could not see half she wanted to, — Popsy did 
not mean to miss seeing a single thing on the 
way. 

In her pocket she carried a little book with 
a pencil tied to it. She had resolved to write 
down in this book the name of every town, 
river, and mountain she saw. It seemed to 
Popsy like seeing the whole world, — to go all 
the way from Tennessee to Missouri. She 


POPSY. 


85 


had never been more than four miles away 
from her father’s house, and she had never 
seen any other sort of life than the life her 
own family, and the farmers’ families in that 
region, led. How things looked in large towns, 
and how things were done in what we should 
now call comfortable and well-appointed houses, 
Popsy had not the least idea. This journey 
was going to teach her a great many things. 

Mr. Meadows was the leader of the party. 
He had the care of all the arrangements; pro- 
viding the food for the animals, selecting the 
place for camping at night, and determining 
the routes they should take. 

He must have had a good instinct about 
roads, for he never but once, during the whole 
six weeks’ journey, lost his way, though all he 
had to go by was a little old map, which had 
few of the roads marked on it. He walked 
every step of the way; always a little in ad- 
vance of the foremost wagon. 


86 


POPSY. 


Popsy, on her yellow horse, was here, there, 
and everywhere, in the procession. She was 
so full of fun and good spirits that she became 
a sort of privileged character. Everybody liked 
to have her come cantering up, and walk her 
horse by the side of the wagons. 

Her brother Jim rode a big bay horse. Pop- 
sy wanted that horse, but it was not thought 
safe for her; it was too high-spirited. 

Old Crusoe was the fastest, if he could only 
be got to do his best; but he was old, had 
lost his ambition, and needed much whipping 
before he would show his speed. One day, 
however, Popsy had the satisfaction of making 
him win in a race with the bay. She had 
dared her brother to a mile run for a pound 
of candy; and she had won fairly and squarely, 
by dint of lashing Crusoe every other second 
with a willow switch she had cut. 

They were just entering a town, and Jim 
made Popsy go into a shop to buy the candy. 


POPSY. 


87 


He held her horse, outside. The first thing 
she saw, when she crossed the threshold, was 
a low iron stove with a fire burning in it. She 
had never before seen a stove. She did not 
know there was such a thing. The sight nearly 
took her breath away. 

“ What’s that ? ” she exclaimed, pointing to it. 
The man in the shop did not understand her. 

“ What’s what ? ” he said. 

“ This thing where ye’ve got your fire ! ” said 
Popsy, kicking it with her foot. “ Why don’t 
you have your fire in a fireplace ? ” 

Then the man laughed at her and told her he 
“ reckoned she was from Tennessee.” At which 
Popsy was angry, and said no more. 

But when she went out, she said to Jim and 
Lyddy, “What do you think they’ve got in 
there ? A kind of a mud-turtle, with fire in it.” 
Which I think was a very good phrase for a child 
of thirteen to have hit upon to describe a stove. 

This was in Kentucky. Kentucky seemed to 


88 


POPSY. 


Popsy a beautiful country ; such lovely hills and 
groves and sparkling streams. She saw many 
a place where she wished that they could stop 
and build a house and live always. 

In the town of Bowling Green, in Kentucky, 
she had an adventure with a parrot, which pro- 
duced a great impression on her mind. 

They had camped, for Sunday, in the out- 
skirts of the town, on the edge of a little stream. 
They always rested over Sunday, and when they 
were not near enough to a town to go in to 
church, they had some sort of religious services 
in the camp. 

On this Sunday, Popsy had strolled away by 
herself, without permission, and walked into 
town. She was sauntering from street to 
street, gazing with eager and anxious eyes at 
every thing and every person, when she spied a 
huge green and red parrot, in a cage, hanging 
in an open window of a room on the first floor 
of a sort of restaurant, or eating-house. 


POPSY. 89 

The window was so low that the bird was but 
little above Popsy’s head. She stood stock-still, 
lost in admiration at the beautiful creature. 
She had never seen any colored pictures of 
birds. She had no idea that so gorgeous a bird 
was to be seen on the face of the earth. It 
almost frightened her, it shone so in the sun, 
and its feathers were of so many splendid colors. 
But how much more frightened was she when, 
after looking at her for a second, the bird opened 
its mouth, and, in distinct words, said, “ Good- 
morning, madam ! Go to hell,” and after this 
a volley of more awful oaths than Popsy had 
ever heard in her life. It was a parrot be- 
longing to some sailors, who had wickedly 
taught it to swear at everybody in this way. 

Poor Popsy took to her heels, and ran for dear 
life, out of the town, back to the camp, and never 
stopped nor toot breath till she had reached 
her mother’s wagon. She made no doubt that 
a miracle had been wrought at that moment, to 


9 o 


POPSY. 


punish her for having broken the Sabbath, and 
run away from camp without leave ; and that 
she was in danger of experiencing all the curses 
which the profane bird had hurled after her. 
This lasted her brother Jim for fun till the end 
of the journey. In fact, poor Popsy did not hear 
the end of it for years; and I do not wonder, 
for I think myself it was a very droll thing to 
have happened just as it did, on a Sunday, 
when Popsy had run away. 

The days flew by like a dream, to Popsy. 
She thought she would like to spend all her 
life journeying in that way. Everything was so 
systematically arranged that there was no real 
discomfort in the life. They had plenty of pro- 
visions in the wagons ; barrels of flour and of 
salted meat, and kegs of cider. There were 
three tents which were set up every night; two 
for the women, and one for the men. Many 
members of the party made up beds in their 
wagons and slept on those. Popsy tried both, 


POPSY. 


91 


but liked the tents best. Every night there were 
built four big fires of logs, and, after the suppers 
had been cooked and eaten, everybody gathered 
around these log fires, and sang, and told stories, 
far into the night. 

There were two fiddles in the party, and 
several first-rate fiddlers, so they never lacked 
for music. 

Popsy never wanted to go to bed. When the 
camp was in a grove she would sometimes select 
a tree, whose branches were low enough to be 
easily climbed, — she could climb like a wildcat, 
— and once up and curled into a crotch, with 
her head resting against the trunk, she would 
sit by the hour, watching the men moving 
about with lanterns, feeding the animals, throw- 
ing logs on the fires, and singing, sometimes 
negro songs, but oftener religious hymns ; for 
they were nearly all Methodists. Then, when 
all the work was done, and the story-telling 
began, it was like fairyland to Popsy. Not 


92 


POPSY. 


a word escaped her ears, and her great blue 
eyes looked black with excitement as she 
listened. 

Once she gave everybody a great scare. It 
had grown very late, and, spite of all her inter- 
est in the stories and talk, Popsy was sleepy. 
Again and again she found herself nodding, 
but she could not make up her mind to tear 
herself away and go to bed. At last she was 
really overpowered by sleep, and her head gave 
so violent a nod that she lost her balance, let 
go of the branch to which she was holding, 
and came down, luckily feet foremost, into the 
middle of the group of story-tellers. 

They were more frightened even than she; 
for they did not know, or had forgotten, that 
she was up there, and their first thought was 
that it must be some sort of wild animal that 
was coming crawling through the branches. 
But Popsy ’s scream soon reassured them. She 
alighted on her feet like a cat, jumping up and 


POPSY. 


93 


down, to get her balance. “ It’s only me,” she 
said. “ I missed my hold on the tree.” 

“Ye was asleep, Pop, ye know ye was,” cried 
her brother Jim. 

“No such thing,” exclaimed Popsy. “ How’d 
I come down on my feet, if I’d been asleep, I’d 
like to know! I wasn’t asleep any more’n you 
are.” 

“ Catch a weasel asleep,” said one of the men. 

“ Pop goes the weasel,” laughed Jim, at which 
Popsy darted back, and, before Jim knew what 
had happened to him, had got his head tight 
under her right arm, and was giving it a good 
sound pummelling, till he was glad to beg for 
mercy. 

“ Don’t call me a weasel again, then,” she said, 
as she marched off as dignifiedly as she knew 
how. 

Another sight Popsy saw on this journey, 
which she never forgot. She was galloping 
along on her horse, when she suddenly saw a 


94 


POPSY. 


man sitting by the roadside, with a big pile of 
sticks and old bones in front of him, building 
them up into a sort of house, as children build 
houses out of corncobs. The man was laugh- 
ing to himself, and pointing to the house, as he 
laid each fresh stick on the pile. Popsy halted 
her horse : “ What be ye doin’ that for ? ” 

The man looked up at her, and burst into a 
loud laugh, still pointing to the sticks and bones, 
but made no reply. While she sat there on 
her horse, looking bewilderedly at the man, her 
father came up, and reproved her, sharply. 

“ Ain’t ye ashamed, Pop,” he said, “ to stare 
so at the poor creature! Come away. It’s an 
idiot.” 

Popsy had never before heard the word idiot ; 
and she did. not in the least know what it 
meant. 

“ I don’t care,” she replied, “ Pm goin’ to have 
a good look at it,” and she waited there till the 
greater part of the procession of wagons had 


POPSY. 


95 


passed her. Then she cantered on, and for half 
a mile the fences on both sides of the road were 
hung full of old bones and sticks, such as the 
man had been playing with. That was the way 
he spent all his time, gathering up old bones, 
and bits of sticks, tying them on to the fences, 
and building them up into towers, which he 
knocked down and built over again a dozen 
times a day. Even now Popsy did not under- 
stand what the word idiot meant, but she asked 
no more questions ; and, for years afterward, she 
thought an idiot was simply a man who tied 
bones on fences. 

When they first started' on this journey, 
Popsy’s mother was so 'feeble that she had to 
lie down all the time on a bed in the bottom of 
one of the wagons ; but, before they had been on 
the road three weeks, she was so much better 
that she could sit up all day, and walk a little. 

There was one woman in the party who had 
come very unwillingly. She did not want to 


9 6 pops K 

leave Tennessee; and she was so angry at her 
husband’s having decided, against her wishes, to 
make the move, that she, too, lay on a bed in 
the bottom of their wagon all the way. She 
would not get up at all to help about anything. 
She would not look out of the wagon, nor let 
anybody see her face, if she could help it. She 
slept most of the time; and when she was 
awake she cried. 

Popsy thought she must be crazy, not to 
care anything about seeing the beautiful coun- 
try they were travelling through, and all the 
interesting people, and things that happened. 
Even when the fiddles were playing at night, 
and everybody in the whdle camp having a good 
time, she would not lift her head from her pil- 
low, nor speak a word. Her husband, poor 
fellow, had a sorry time with her. I think he 
must have wished he had stayed at home. 

When they got into the southern part of 
Illinois, the party broke up, about half of them 


POPS Y. 


97 


deciding to settle there, instead of pushing on to 
Missouri. 

Both of the fiddles and the two best story- 
tellers stayed behind, here, which was a loss 
Popsy felt deeply. There was not so much fun 
after that; and very often Popsy would be in 
bed and sound asleep on a wagon-bottom, in 
half an hour after they stopped for the night. 
She was growing a little tired and sore from the 
saddle, also, and sometimes, in the day-time, she 
and her sister would tie their horses behind one 
of the wagons, and climb in, on top of the piled 
boxes and trunks, and ride there for part of a 
day. It was from one of these perched-up seats 
inside the wagon that Popsy made a famous 
leap to the ground, which might have broken* 
her neck, but, by great good fortune, did not 
hurt her at all. 

It was in a farming town in the high lands 
in Illinois. The wagon-train* had stopped to let 
the cattle drink, and Jim came galloping up to 


98 


POPSY. 


the wagon in which Popsy was sitting. “ Oh, 
Pop, Pop ! ” he cried, “ get down quick. Here’s 
an Irish woman making cider with her feet.” 

The driver who had helped Popsy up to her 
perch was filling his bucket at the spring. 
Popsy was too impatient to wait for his re- 
turn. She eyed the distance between her perch 
and the near ox’s back, made a spring, and 
alighted firm on the astonished creature’s shoul- 
ders, caught hold of the two horns, and swung 
herself to the - ground, greeted by the cheers of 
half a dozen men, who had sprung forward to 
catch her, when they saw her come flying 
through the air. 

“Well done, Pop!” they shouted. But her 
father was very angry, and told her if he caught 
her doing such a thing again, he would give 
her a whipping she would not forget in a day. 
Popsy hardly heard either the praise or the 
blame, she was in such a hurry to overtake 
Jim, whose big bay horse she saw a few rods 


POPSY. 


99 


ahead, standing in front of a shed. She was 
on Crusoe’s back in a second, and by Jim’s 
side before he thought she would have had 
time to climb down from the wagon. 

“ How’d ye get down so quick, Pop ? ” he said. 

“Jumped,” replied Pop, curtly. “Daddy said 
he’d lick me if I did it again. It didn’t hurt me. 
I knew old Major wouldn’t budge. His back’s 
broad as a barn door.” 

“Ye didn’t light on Major’s back, though, did 
ye, Pop ? ” exclaimed Jim. 

“ Course I did,” replied Pop. “ I’ll do it again 
some day, when daddy’s on in front. It’s real fun.” 

“ Pop, you’d ought ter ha’ bin a boy,” said Jim, 
admiringly. 

“ I expect so,” answered Pop. “Oh, the dirty 
thing! Just look at her feet. They’re as black 
as mud. Well ! I don’t want any Illinois cider, 
if this is the way they make it.” 

There stood the Irish woman, in a great 
wooden vat, half up to her knees in foaming 


100 


POPSY. 


apples and cider, her bare feet, as she jumped 
up and down, showing, as Popsy had said, black 
as mud. It was not an appetizing sight for a 
cider-drinker. In her two hands she held a big 
wooden pestle ; and with this she beat and 
mashed the apples, all the while hopping and 
whirling about in the vat, and stamping with 
her feet, till the juice flew in all directions, and 
spattered her face and hair. 

“Weell yees have some cider?” she called out, 
tossing the hair back from her face, and resting 
her pestle on the floor of the vat. She hoped 
here would be a fine chance to sell some of her 
cider to this big party of travellers. “ I’ve a fine 
barrel uv it, jist over beyant there,” pointing to 
her house on the other side of the road; “a 
fine barrel uv it, swate, an’ a plinty that’s sour, 
for thim uz likes it sour.” 

“Have ye got any that’s clean, mother?” 
asked one of the men. 

“Clane, is it, ye’re askin’?” she exclaimed, 


POPSY. 


IOI 


with great surprise; “sure, an’ why shouldn’t 
it be clane?” 

At which everybody roared ; and Popsy, with 
her usual impetuosity, cried out, “ Why, your 
feet are as dirty as anything.” 

“ Indade, an’ they are as clane, thin, as a babe’s 
in arrms ; it’s the stain o’ the cider ye see on 
thim, an’ it’s nothin’ else. It’s no worse for 
the cider than for the wine ye drink, is it thin ? 
I’ve niver heard tell, ayther, as hands wuz made 
afore feet,” and, seeing that she was not going to 
make any trade for her cider, she fell to, more 
vigorously than before, at her beati-ng and stamp- 
ing; and Jim and Popsy rode away, looking 
back over their shoulders as long as they could 
see her. Popsy was aghast. 

“What did she mean about the wine, Jim?” 
she said. “ They don’t stamp it out that way, 
with feet, do they ? ” 

“Don no,” replied Jim, “shouldn’t wonder. 
Nobody’s hurt by what he don’t see.” 


102 


POPSY. 


“ Ugh!” said Popsy, shuddering. “ It makes 
me sick to think on’t. I mean to ask daddy.” 

But before she had a chance to speak with her 
father, new scenes and new incidents had put it 
out of her mind. One thing followed another 
on this journey so fast that Popsy could not 
remember half of them. Even where other 
people did not see much to observe, or be 
interested in, she was full of eager interest and 
observation. Nothing escaped her quick eyes. 

It was on the fourteenth of September that 
they left home. And it was not until the thirty- 
first of October that they reached the spot, in the 
northeast corner of Missouri, which was destined 
to be Popsy’s home for the next thirty years of 
her life. 

The precise place had not been determined on 
before leaving home. Mr. Meadows preferred to 
decide that for himself, on the spot. It was a 
sort of accident which finally settled that impor- 
tant question. 


popsy : 


103 


They camped, one night, in the edge of a fine 
oak wood, on a little stream. In a clearing in 
this forest stood a small, two-roomed log cabin. 
On making the acquaintance of the people liv- 
ing in it, Mr. Meadows found out that they 
would like to sell the place. Nick Roberts was 
the man’s name. This clearing and this cabin 
were the thirteenth clearing and cabin he had 
made in the wild regions in the West. He said 
he believed it was his mission in life to go ahead 
and cut down trees and build log cabins for 
other people. At any rate, as soon as he had 
got one made, somebody always came along, and 
offered him a good sum of money for it, so he 
would sell it, and push along again into some 
new wilderness. 

When Popsy found that her father was going 
to buy this place, she went off, alone, far, far into 
the woods, and had a good cry. It seemed to 
her the loneliest, dreariest place she ever saw. 
The land was rough and hilly, broken up into 


104 


POPS Y. 


ravines and cliffs ; the woods were dark, and full 
of underbrush ; it was five miles from a town, 
and poor Popsy had hoped so much that their 
new home would be near a village, so that she 
could, as she would have said, “ see folks.” Then 
the little log cabin seemed to her only fit for a 
barn. Altogether, Popsy was wretched enough. 

“After all the lovely, beautiful country we’ve 
come through,” she thought to herself, “hun- 
dreds and hundreds of miles of it, what could 
made daddy choose this horrid place ? ” 

Many a good cry Popsy had, and Lyddy also, 
in those first days at Nick Roberts’s. When 
they found that the Robertses were not going 
out of the cabin till spring, they felt worse than 
ever. 

“ What! all live together in these two rooms! ” 
cried Popsy. “We can’t!” Popsy had yet to 
learn what can be endured by settlers in a new 
country. Their old house in Tennessee, though 
it had not been a very good one, had still been 


POPSY. 


105 


roomy and comfortable, in comparison with this. 
“ I’ll sleep in the wagon all winter then,” said 
Popsy to her sister. “ I won’t be in the room 
with all these folks we don’t know.” 

But before the winter was half over, it was far 
too cold to sleep in the wagons, and Popsy and 
Lyddy were glad enough to be tucked away 
on the floor, in the corner of the room where 
grandma Roberts, and Mrs. Roberts, and her 
two children, and Popsy’s mother, all slept. 
The men slept in the outside room, which was 
also the kitchen. It had a big stove in it, and 
two wooden settles, and the men slept, rolled up 
in blankets, on these settles. 

In the spring, when the Robertses went away, 
Popsy cried as hard as she had cried in the 
autumn, at the thought of having to live with 
them. They seemed now just like her own 
grandparents, and uncle, and aunt, and her 
affectionate heart was nearly broken at the 
thought of never seeing them again. But 


10 6 POPSY. 

there was not much time that summer for 
crying over anything. How they did all have 
to work ! Popsy and Lyddy as hard as any- 
body else, — clearing up fields, planting wheat, 
getting ready to build the new house. They 
had a terrible bit of bad luck with their first 
orchard. In Tennessee it had always been the 
custom to plant the wheat between the trees in 
the orchards. So Mr. Meadows planted wheat 
in his orchard here ; but the Missouri soil was 
different. The wheat killed out all the young 
trees but one. And that was a terrible loss. 

One of the biggest jobs Popsy did was setting 
out wild gooseberries. The woods all about 
were full of wild gooseberry bushes. As soon 
as the bushes were transplanted and cultivated, 
the fruit grew very large and delicious. Popsy 
was so fond of gooseberries that she did not 
mind working hard to make sure of having all 
she wanted to eat ; and the second summer after 
they moved to Missouri she actually dug up 


POPS Y. 


107 


with her own hands one hundred gooseberry 
bushes, brought them from the woods in bundles 
on her back, — just as she had brought flax, two 
years before, — and set them out in rows on 
two sides of the garden. On the opposite sides 
were currant bushes, red, white, and black ; and 
a big raspberry patch ; so they did not lack 
for fruit. 

Here Popsy lived till she grew up to be a 
woman, and was married to the son of one of 
their near neighbors. Then she went to live 
with him, on his father’s farm, only a few miles 
away; and she never had another journey till 
she was over forty years old. Through all those 
years, this journey of which I have told you re- 
mained in her mind as the most wonderful and 
interesting experience of her life. It was, indeed, 
as I have called it, her “ Grand Journey.” 















































































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